Clever showerheads

When you take a shower, you turn the water on, wait for it to get hot, then you get in.

It's that second step that's the problem, environmentally speaking: As a company called Evolve Showerheads points out, while you're waiting for the agua to heat up, "two-and a half gallons of hot water per minute are funneling down the drain."

Evolve designs the solution into their products:

Utilizing the unique, patent-pending ShowerStart technology, [our] showerheads [stop] the flow to a trickle when the water reaches a comfortable 95 degrees. This way your hot water's no longer running down the drain while you're away from the shower.

Using an evolve showerhead can save a yearly average of 2,700 gallons of water, the fossil-fueled energy it takes to heat it, and up to $75 off your utility bill.

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2 Comments

Miguel,
I had the same feelings about this shower head at first. If you're going to save as much water as possible (the cold water included), why not try to save all of it? Beyond the shower head, water heaters are becoming more and more versatile, under sink water heaters, electric water heats and wall mountable garage heaters. On-demand water heaters, still waste the "cold" warm up water, but use less energy, as they don't constantly heat the water to be used.
That cold water, in my house, is saved and used to flush the toilet or used to water the garden. The design and innovation is there, love it.

Don't know how it works on your side, but in Spain most water heaters work on gas and get activated by water flow. If you close the tap to its 50% flow or less the heater stops, I think Evolve system wouldn't work.
We use a really more hypotechnological approach. We measured in water amount how much time the hot water lasted to arrive from the heater to the shower, bought a bucket according to that amount (10litres/2.6 gal) and pour the cold water in the bucket.
A 10 litre bucket is good enough to be hidden under the basin.and use it as a manual flush thus saving 2,6 Gal a day of water. 300 litres a month...